Rushing Toward the Cliff While “Tweaking” the “Quirks”
In 2001, the PR firms that the Business Roundtable hired to sell their plan to blow up public schools and to rebuild themin the corporate image for corporate benefit could not have settled on a more cynical and appealingmantra: we must close the achievement gap, and NCLB is the way to do it.
Now over ten years later, the gaps are still gaping andgrowing wider as the achievement disparities map click by click onto to the diverginglines on the inequality chart between rich and poor. Who would have guessed that applying thumbscrewsto the most vulnerable of the nation’s teachers and students would not have had thedesired effect of ending the achievement gap? Even though it did have tremendous benefit to the corporate